About The Book

Living Zen is that rare achievement, both a survey of the rich history of Zen Buddhism and a guide to the practice of this most demanding and effortless art of being. Linssen, a distinguished Belgian scholar, offers a sage corrective to the idea that the Zen way is available only to those prepared to sit life out under the Bhodi-Tree. Gently but insistently he undermines this typically Western view, inviting and enabling us, as Christmas Humphreys puts it in his preface, to take “the leap from thought to No-thought, from the ultimate duality of Illusion/Reality to a burst of laughter and a cup of tea.”

Praise

“An excellent study.” –San Francisco Chronicle

“Linssen’s aim throughout this penetrating book is to encourage his readers to outgrow the cocoon of self-centered thought and feeling. The core of the book lies in its lucid analysis . . . and in the meaning which it gives to the true attention, focused undesirously in the immediate present, which can dissolve the endless distraction of the fear-conditioned ego.” –The Times Literary Supplement

“Robert Linssen finally gives a sensible explanation of what Zen is all about.” –Saturday Review